After 36 hrs and a severely damaged viral campaign. Today we got back this apathetic response:

Hi guys,

I apologize for the delay in getting back in touch. I ran this past various teams at YouTube and their feedback was the following: Content containing mild violence, sexual or other provocative content may not show up when using Safety Mode.

Unfortunately that’s about all they’re able to provide — they also shared this link with me in case it helps to have more context on safety mode.

I apologize I’m not able to help more on this issue but appreciate your patience.

Thank you,
Sara

The irony is that ALL but one of our VidAngel videos are blocked in “safety mode”, not just the viral one we released with G/PG paintball marker mild “violence”.

There is no option for appeal. Another rep (who is on our side and trying to help without luck) said that YouTube doesn’t even have a department for this kind of problem.

This response is coming to a team which has signed off on millions upon millions in YouTube advertising spend over the past 4 years (Orabrush, Orapup, PooPourri, Endorse Liberty Super PAC…). In the past I’ve always been impressed with YouTube’s willingness to help on this kind of stuff, but this time I am getting nothing but apathy.

If you are concerned and want to help, you can voice your concern to Google here on this forum.

With 700k views in 5 days, YouTube “Safety Mode” is currently blocking families (or anyone with “safety mode” turned on) from seeing our viral ad promoting awareness about the rise of inappropriate content in media. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there; our entire YouTube channel appears to be affected. We suspect this is being caused by trolls or haters flagging our videos as inappropriate content despite its family centric message and G/PG rated content. It seems Youtube provides no quick solution to getting these problems fixed, and thus jeopardizes our entire marketing campaign because our message is being censored from the very people it’s meant for.

Note that VidAngel’s main video, with over 700k views, ONLY shows up in the results when Safety Mode is OFF!

VidAngel’s message uses paintball markers, exhaustive safety measures (see behind the scenes) and G/PG rated type action to make a powerful point against swearing, promiscuity, and graphic violence in media. The video is about parents right to control what and how they watch media in their own homes. This family-message is now being censored similar to graphic sex scenes, graphic violence and other un-family-friendly content.

ALL but one of VidAngel’s Videos Are Censored:

If you visit VidAngel’s channel you will see that YouTube isn’t just blocking our viral paintball hit but all of our videos except one:

SAFETY MODE ON:

SAFETY MODE OFF:

Examples of Content NOT Blocked (compared with blocked VidAngel content):

VidAngel’s Videos Are Blocked From Families

Not Censored On YouTube

VidAngel Video Promoting Awareness about the rise Profanity, Violence, and Promiscuity in film.

Disturbing and graphic Game of Thrones Death Scenes with over 300k views

VidAngel How it works video without any paintballs markers at all.

Assassin’s Creed Trailer LITERAL with graphic violence and gore.

Behind The Scenes for VidAngel going over the MANY safety precautions used in filming with paintball markers

A couple of guys playing the FIFA video game, using the F-word and shooting each other with a paintball gun with no safety equipment. Almost 6 million views.

75% Drop In Conversion Rates

VidAngel’s target audience is everyone who uses “Safety Mode” on YouTube. Instead our video is now only reaching those who don’t care to even use YouTube safety features, let alone the more robust safety features of VidAngel. We are still going viral but the crowd we are trying to reach is being blocked. We have seen our conversion rates drop sharply by 75% after the 24th of July when the censoring began.

Dislikes Have Increased by 300%

Because the video is being blocked from our target audience we have seen a massive decline in our likes to dislikes ratio.

How Many Marketing Campaigns Is “Safety Mode” Destroying?

We are aware that this kind of censoring can be triggered by haters gaming the YouTube feedback system to get VidAngel blocked. We assume this is the case as our video could easily be displayed on national TV. In addition The Piano Guys, one of the most family friendly YouTube channels on the Internet, posted our video to their Facebook page and had a 400% better response than their average post.

Unfortunately this kind of mistake in YouTube’s system can completely destroy months of work and lots of money invested in a large viral marketing campaign. We hope YouTube will remedy this ASAP. This issue is not limited to VidAngel, but MANY marketing campaigns where enough haters ban together to get an ad censored in safety mode.

This also shows the need of a system like VidAngel on YouTube for parental controls that actually work.

Help us get “Every Word Has Impact” out of Safety Mode. We opened a support request on YouTube’s support forum. Please post a quick reply here to let YouTube know you would like this problem fixed. We hope that with your help we can get the attention needed to resolve this ASAP. If anyone is aware of a quicker solution, please contact us at press@vidangel.com. Thank you for your support!